Necromancy, Restored?

Stratics Veteran

Necromancy is a skill driven by curses, with 5 of 17 spells falling into this category, With so much removal ability at the common player disposal I suggest the potency of some gets increased, with strangle no longer being effected by removal abilities and items.

Animate Dead: Overall I am quite happy with Animate Dead, however that said this spell could use one minor tweak. We should have the ability to animate the corpses of bonded creatures. Honestly with the amount of tamers in the game today there should be some small joy we can receive if we actually kill their pet, as we animate it's body and watch it turn on its prior master. Some of the best creatures are constantly used by tamers in pvp (greater dragons, dread mares and cu sidhes) let us capitalize on their use of powerful creatures, to get a temporary powerful undead minion.

Blood Oath: To be honest other then this spell being a curse I am completely fine with how it is, and I am fine with the fact it is a curse (It should be).

Corpse Skin: I have pretty big issues with the effectivness of this spell, not only can it easily be removed. A suit can completely nullify any effect this would have. Well the likely-hood of encountering players with 85 fire and poison resist is low, it remains a possibilty, which completely negates any 'negative' effect this spell has. I propose this becomes more like the magery spell curse, and based on a formula of caster's necromancy / spiritspeak lowers the Fire and Poison resist cap of the target so overstacking those resists cannot negate this. Poison damage is the necromancer's 'bread and butter' if they cannot get it below 70 we'd be hard pressed to kill a decently skilled opponent.

Curse Weapon: This spell is fine, serves it's purpose.

Evil Omen: Also a classified a curse, however the spell is fine.

Horrific Beast: Absolutely terrible, has anyone EVER used this? We have this yet mysticism gets stone form. Horrific Beast needs to be completely redone and I have no thoughts on how, or it needs to be removed the game its an embarassment.

Lich Form: This form is situational at best, has plently of drawbacks. However it serves a purpose and for that I am fine with how it is.

Mind Rot: Once again another curse, easily removed the concept of the spell is nice however due to LMC and Mana Regen the effects are not noticeable. That said aside from maybe upping the potency a notch, this spell is also fine the way it is.

Pain Spike: This is actually still one of my favorite spells, it's a quick casting 18-30 damage finisher spell. So I say leave this one alone as well.

Poison Strike: This spell is almost perfect, but without a reliable way to ensure our target has weakened poison resistance the effectivness is minimal. As long as we have a way to lower our targets resistance more effectively then the current Corpse Skin I am fine with this remaining how it is.

Strangle: Remove strangle from the curse category, There is currently to many ways to cleanse this spell. And as one of the necromancers top 3 offensive weapons.
This is how I see it. Currently in the game there are countless options to minimize the damage received from this spell by simply playing smart and making use of what you have (such as Focus for a mystic, refreshment potions, divine fury for chivalry, or even fellow necromancers can make use of their familiar's and summon a darkwolf) Having the ability to completely remove this spell shouldn't be an option.

Summon Familiar: These guys are all pretty useful in the right situation, so these are fine left how they are in my opinion.

Vampiric Embrace: The garlic burn should be removed. As well Vampiric Embrace should provide 'immunity' to poisons level 1-4 similar to that provided while in stoneform. Deadly poison should still be applied, and cure potions should still not be usuable.

Life Drain should not only occur when striking with a weapon, it should once again be applied to spellcasting as well. (Isn't that way we have curse weapon)
There are still drawbacks to this form, but with a few tweaks the viability of this form is available for use.

Vengeful Spirit: This is not the greatest summon spell, but it's uniqueness makes it usefull. So this is fine left alone.

Wither: Very powerful, very good as is.

Wraith Form: Very balanced already, fine as is.

So in closing, as it stands today Necromancy is overly-reliant on curses to be competitive. With so many options readily available to any class of character to remove 'all' curses with one spell, or one piece of food. Strangle deserves to no longer be classified in this category, and remain an unremoveable offensive weapon. The opponent of a necromancer should have to learn to manage his stamina, not rely on simple curse removal to nullify our attacks.

Corpse Skin should have a more significant impact on players, rather then them overloading fire and poison resists to negate any impact this spell can deliver, which in turn would give lesser used offensive spell Poison Strike some life.

A minor change to allow the Animate Dead spell to work on the corpses of bonded creatures, provides a very minor but I'd say good change.

When I look at Necromancy the way I see it is 4 of our 17 spells are forms Horrific BeastLich FormWraith Form and Vampiric Embrace Which leads me to believe that the goal of being a necromancer is always be in a form, using which best benefits you at the time. The problem with this theory is that unless your a melee class Horrific Beast and Vampiric Embrace are not viable options as it currently stands.

I am not looking for necromancy to become a powerhouse, but I do believe this skill deserves to remain competitive in today's game.

Have any of you ever dropped a HP suit on a HB? Its truly amazing. Now with HP regn way way through the roof certain situations are much more manageable. I simply can not stand the no spells whatsoever condition it sets. That is a huge negative to its small positive.

Wither is my 2nd choice spell of all spells in game for damage. I just cant seem to get away from tying into my caster templates.

Strangle is kind of dumb. It "can" be devastating but just isnt. I think the idea behind it was a necro nox mage. Where you CS(lower poison) poison strangle then dump mana damaging the stm with FS. With the addition of %100 cures and curse removal that has been nerfed past little league back to kindergarten! The use of evil omen should be the way to over ride curse removal and well poison is...pretty dead the way things are.

If timed right a mind rot wins fights . This spell is very bad for even the highest mana warriors. Again as the OP said it is all too easy to remove. I am sure some players are running curse removal talis on 1 touch macros.

The bottom line here is that since SA the necro template hasn't been enhanced quite as much as just about any other template through imbueing. A little more MR some extra mana but thats it. The warriors have increased their damage mana swing rate and skill lists by a ton. Now Im not saying that didnt need to be done but with the necromancer that "pace" has not been met.

Stratics Veteran

I agree with many of these changes, particularly horrific beast form having some benefit. A lot of the spells are outdated and like you said, can use some updates. I believe that corpse skin should be percentage based where you lose a certain percent of your resistance instead of a solid amount (scaled by resist magic maybe). Exorcism should also have a more practical use.

Stratics Veteran

I agree with the Vamp Form proposal, considering Mystic can easily just cast them out of form. The life leech with spell damage is kinda whack but perhaps if it was only off monsters it would be viable. Considering archers and dexers can gain life off monsters with life leech and vamp form as it is. This would offer a considerable trade off between wraith form and vamp form since you could go into vamp form and wither high end spawn without insta dieing.

Stratics Veteran

Corpse Skin could easily be fixed by not allowing over buff of suit's resists (more of a reason to use an apple sooner which incorporates more player knowledge/skill).
Vampiric Embrace the only thing that should be changed about this is the amount of spirit speak skill you have should effect the amount of life leech the form gives you as well as the level of poison you can resist and stamina/mana regen you receive (I know I know balance would make most cut and paste pvm difficult again).

Animate Dead The only thing that should be done here is make the summons take commands and give the ability to be dispelled with magic(obviously greater difficulty with higher level necro/ss).

They should really add a more unique ability to most of the transformations, but only allow them if you have the appropriate level of spirit speak. Wraith form is about the only balanced one of the lot.

Stratics VeteranStratics Legend

Horrific Beast: Absolutely terrible, has anyone EVER used this? We have this yet mysticism gets stone form. Horrific Beast needs to be completely redone and I have no thoughts on how, or it needs to be removed the game its an embarassment.

Click to expand...

I've used this once with a friend, both with a wrestling char and we use to fight in horrific beast form
Funny purposes apart, I agree with the fact that must be redone with the rest of the useless spells...

The familiars have their own use, like horde minion, snake, wisp and wolf, but the bat need to be changed cause actually is useless

Stratics Veteran

Blood oath is overpowered and needs to be nurfed just like they did axers. I rarely die by a necro except for 'Me hitting my self' - insta kill - BS

Click to expand...

carry a few apples or take up a few points in myst, you can cancel any necro spell out immediately with little to no damage. It's much like poisoning these days, it's so easily canceled out in pvp it's not really worth the points cost anymore.

It is still useful in pvm though, and I like having wraith form on my thief (allows closing in to snoop without being bumped and revealed, though it sacrifices the quick getaway)

Honestly i think necro ITSELF is fine, much like poisoning, it's apples canceling out necro spells with 100% chance, and cleansing winds canceling them out AND healing at the same time that makes it barely worth having in pvp situations. (and the revenant now isn't that great with all the high level armors and DCI, it barely ever hits anyone, it's one use that it's still good at though is it will follow a stealther and reveal them constantly)

Blood oath is incredibly strong at least, just have to cast it about 50 times to burn all of their apples first

Roland: Vamp form can ride mounts just fine, and there were some damned good pvp necro dexxers back before and just around SE launch

What I'd like to see is the decay effect on animated dead removed. All it serves to do is make the undead mounts useless. (Unless you exploit the server line bug.) I also wouldn't mind being able to target Spirit Speak to heal undead minions with.

Either way the minions are still temporary as they don't recall with you, can't be stabled, can't be resurrected, and generally aren't all that good anyway.

Giving HB a different graphic and letting it cast spells would be a nice start.

Honestly if I had control and was free to waste dev resources on whatever I wanted, I'd give Necromancy a 'ghetto taming' aspect. Make undead obey commands, take up slots, follow you when you recall, remove decay, let you heal them with spirit speak, etcetera. Throw a guy in that little crypt in Umbra who can "stable" them for you.

Don't let them gain skills or bond, though. When they die, make another. Since most of them are pretty crappy anyway it wouldn't exactly be overpowered.

Ah well, I'm sure there are a million bugfixes and game systems and crappy cash-shop items to work on that would take precedence anyway.

Stratics Veteran

[Vampiric Embrace[/COLOR] the only thing that should be changed about this is the amount of spirit speak skill you have should effect the amount of life leech the form gives you as well as the level of poison you can resist and stamina/mana regen you receive (I know I know balance would make most cut and paste pvm difficult again).

Click to expand...

No it wouldn't. It would remove the little variety in the templates that there are now. Instead of being able to switch out X/Y/Z skills- they would all become more cookie cutter.

Easy way around the current blood oath is feint. You still deal the additional damage, but only receive 50% of the reflected damage. Other wise apple or summon something till it wears off.

Click to expand...

I use soulseeker, so it's RNG for the Feint.
and it's probably not the spell itself because it's pretty short lived, it's the other little 'changes' that were put into place for mobs, like 100% uninterrupted Insta-Cast - wade into a group and Whirlwind, then do it one more time to finish them all off. yup, they're dead, me too.
leaving the area and just stop playing for a few is about the only option

Stratics Veteran

No it wouldn't. It would remove the little variety in the templates that there are now. Instead of being able to switch out X/Y/Z skills- they would all become more cookie cutter.

Click to expand...

People shouldn't be easily soloing any champ. That's how it is now. I'm not looking at how unique my sampire is compared to the other sampires out there. I'm looking at how people are able to abuse a transformation to take out the aspect of this game being an MMORPG.

It would be comparable to stone form getting all of its benefits with only 120 mysticism skill and 0 focus. Why does that transformation need the 120 focus when vampiric embrace only needs 99 necromancy and 0 spirit speak to be at its maximum effectiveness?

People shouldn't be easily soloing any champ. That's how it is now. I'm not looking at how unique my sampire is compared to the other sampires out there. I'm looking at how people are able to abuse a transformation to take out the aspect of this game being an MMORPG.

It would be comparable to stone form getting all of its benefits with only 120 mysticism skill and 0 focus. Why does that transformation need the 120 focus when vampiric embrace only needs 99 necromancy and 0 spirit speak to be at its maximum effectiveness?

Click to expand...

IDK if its all champ/peerless but I do know most if not all of the SA champ/peerless have higher drop rates when it is NOT soloed. Anyone soloing for artis at least in SA content just doesn't have anyone to play with. And that is the right direction for MMORPG style gaming instead of nerfing the ability to solo leave it as an option albeit less valuable as it should be.

VE while it is the heart and soul of a warrior, it gives no benefit nay is a curse to a mage template(no garlic). Now Im not saying VE warriors are not doing well, They are but, The casting necro really does need a bump!

Stratics VeteranStratics Legend

Hm. Poison immunity doesn't really matter when you leech health through poison damage. The main benefit of Stone Form over VE is you get a free form of Magic Resist, which is, in certain situations, even more powerful than 120 Magic Resist.

Anyway, if spells leeched life from VE then you would have people complaining fast about wither bombs, especially if you removed garlic burn. And to the OP, you can't be so inconsistent. If you can cast cure but can't drink cure that doesn't make sense.

I think we can all agree the following three spells should be changed in some regard: Corpse Skin, Mind Rot, and Horrific Beast. However, Corpse Skin also needs a nerf. Right now you take off -15/-15 as soon as you can succeed the spell, which is dumb. There should be a gradual increase in potency, and a reason to have a 120 necro. Also, I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned it yet, but sometimes PvM dexxers use corpse skin on themselves. I'm not sure how many players use scribe and/or corpse skin anymore post imbuing, but it's something to consider when changing the nature of the spell.

What I would do is start with Corpse Skin the way it is for PvP except make it scale from 60, starting at -5/-5 plus -1 for every 6 skill points extra, up to -15/-15 at 120 necro (IE, -10/-10 at 90 necro). Then I'd add a hard cap reduction of -5/-5 at 110 necro and -10/-10 at 120 necro, which would give corpse skin the equivalent power of magery's curse spell against fire and poison. However, I'd give Magic Resist of the same value the ability to negate the hard cap reduction. For example, 120 magic resist would negate the hard cap reduction of 120 necro to 0. This way you can't override necro skill with 85/85 items alone, while Magic Resist would remain a strong skill to use for resisting magic, as it should be.

Stratics Veteran

People shouldn't be easily soloing any champ. That's how it is now. I'm not looking at how unique my sampire is compared to the other sampires out there. I'm looking at how people are able to abuse a transformation to take out the aspect of this game being an MMORPG.

It would be comparable to stone form getting all of its benefits with only 120 mysticism skill and 0 focus. Why does that transformation need the 120 focus when vampiric embrace only needs 99 necromancy and 0 spirit speak to be at its maximum effectiveness?

Stratics VeteranStratics Legend

It would be comparable to stone form getting all of its benefits with only 120 mysticism skill and 0 focus. Why does that transformation need the 120 focus when vampiric embrace only needs 99 necromancy and 0 spirit speak to be at its maximum effectiveness?

Click to expand...

Stone Form is probably more comparable to a sammy/whammy/wammy whatever you want to call it, a wraith samurai w/ necro and ss. Most high end PvMers use either a thrower (highest DPS in game), a wammy, or they crossheal with another mystic dexxer--depending on the sitch. It's tougher to solo the best stuff without spiritspeak, that's for sure.

Stratics Veteran

I know that lol. I've been abusing it since the first day I could cast vampiric embrace that was way back when I got the second Blade of Insanity in existence on GL. It was even more OP when you could have 90% HCI and would never miss a champ.. I'm not saying anything about vampiric embrace should be changed. It should just get its abilities from the amount of points you invest in it's partner skill. If anything it should become more powerful than it is now with 120necro/120 spirit along with the other transformations.

Stratics Veteran

Necro was meant to made for warrior templates, thats why mages want them revamped (pun). Sadly ive never seen anyone (good) pvp necro dexxer and ive sure as hell never tried to.

Click to expand...

Ive run into quite a few necro warriors and the strongest one was a 4/6 chiv fencer necro. Pre mysticism this guy was an absolute beast, these days with cleansing winds and mysticism being catered to protection players he still does well but isn't as much of a terror as he previously had been. But the idea is purely disruptive, protection nerfs a lot of the effectivness.

Stratics is the oldest continually running MMORPG Fansite on the Internet. Founded in 1997 Stratics has served the Ultima Online Community for 18 years. We strive to provide the most complete social experience for Ultima Online players.